This is one of those situations where everything seems to be going smoothly and then out of nowhere someone is staring death straight in his cold, bony face.
While attempting a mid-air refuelling between a KC-135 tanker and a NATO E-3 Sentry (the one with the massive radar on the back) the two planes came within a cat’s whisker of total destruction. Thankfully, both pilots were wide-awake and avoided all danger by preforming an evasive manoeuvre.
The NATO E-3 Sentry drops its nose so fast that the crew would have experienced -7Gs of force. The most you’d feel in a typical commercial airplane is roughly 2Gs, and that’s pushing it.
It was a seriously close call for everyone involved and we just hope these guys get paid well if that’s the sort of thing they have to put up with from time to time.
